Talmudic Law

Talmud, from the Hebrew root 1-m-d, “to learn, to study,” refers to two very large compilations produced by Galilean and Babylonian rabbis in the late fourth and early sixth centuries CE, respectively. They are encyclopedic in size and scope but not in arrangement. The earlier one, usually called the Palestinian Talmud, the Talmud of the Land of Israel, or the Jerusalem Talmud (the Yerushalmi) runs to just under 900,000 words. The later, the Babylonian Talmud (the Bavli), is more than 1,863,000 words.

Although both are formally commentaries on an early third-century rabbinic law code, the Mishnah (220 CE), completed in Palestine, they in reality comprise many elements. There is a heady mixture of law in the rabbinic sense, which includes the rules of civil and ritual law, and legal analysis, including the analysis of cases that serve as precedents. In addition, there is theology, biblical interpretation, ethical teachings, stories of biblical heroes and rabbinic figures, medical and other technical lore, and folk beliefs—in short, everything that the rabbis of late antiquity thought worthy of study and preservation.

The Mishnah was well on its way to becoming an authoritative code of Jewish life, but it also contained [Page 1453]a tremendous amount of material that was no longer relevant after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. The continued study of much of this material meant that the leading rabbis of both talmuds were—unlike the Roman jurists, but like some of their Persian counterparts—interested in both ritual and civil and criminal law. This encouraged a sort of crossfertilization between the various areas of rabbinic study, something that is totally absent in Roman law and only beginning (in a small way) in Persian law.